Customer Reviews

World Of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade

5 star:		(115)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

This expansion pack introduces the new continent of Outland. This continent can only be accessed with a character that is at least level 58. If you're either just starting to play World of Warcraft, or you have no characters even close to level 58, you may just want to wait to buy the expansion at a later time.

However, the expansion also grants you access to two new races, the Draenei (Alliance) and the Blood Elves (Horde). You won't be able to create characters of either of these races if you don't have the expansion. So, if you want to play one of them you'll need to get it. If you're a new player who's just trying out the game, I'd suggest just getting the basic version and playing one of the original races, rather than spending the extra $40 before you even know whether you like the game.

You should also be warned that if you're upgrading from the original version of the game, even if your copy is already fully patched, you'll have to install the patches again after installing Burning Crusade. This is because they printed the CDs with version 2.0 of the client you use to play the game, but they've issued patches after that which you need to log into the server (up to version 2.05 as of this writing). If you look in the Patches sub-folder of your World of Warcraft folder on your computer, you should already have some of the patches present and be able to simply double click them to install. If you were to try to log in before doing that, you'll have to redownload the patch before it installs instead, which will naturally take more time.

Some people have complained about lag, crashes, and lines to log into the more popular servers. These are all short term problems. A lot of people are very excited about the expansion, and so there are far more players than usual logged in at once, which is straining the servers. Give it a week or two after release and it should begin to settle down.

For the basic version of WoW, the level cap is 60. If you install the expansion, the cap is increased to 70. If you have a level 60 character and want to continue to advance, you MUST upgrade your account with the expansion pack.

Additional level brackets for the Battlegrounds (Player vs Player areas) have been added to accomodate the new higher levels in the game. Also, a new battleground called Eye of the Storm has been made available for characters of level 61 and above. Additionally, around the zones of the new Outland continent, there are PvP tasks you can perform such as taking over control of towers, with the faction that controls all of the towers in a zone gaining a small bonus such as a 5% increase to damage anywhere in that zone.

They've also added a number of new instances/dungeons. The new ones have two settings, allowing you to go through them at either 'normal' difficulty, or 'heroic' difficulty. The heroic setting makes the enemies tougher, and provides increased treasure rewards. This keeps the instances useful for advancement over a larger span of levels than would normally be the case.

Most players will find that, as they do quests in Outland, they quickly begin to get armor that's superior to what they've previously been using. The monetary rewards in the new areas are also increased. Additionally, professions have been expanded to cover the additional levels in the game and tailoring has been expanded to include specialties similar to the way blacksmithing and leatherworking work.

Flying mounts are available on the continent of Outland for those who purchase them. However, these are not available to be used in the two original continents. This is because those areas were designed with the intention that they would only be accessed from the ground and a lot of work would have been required to make all of the quests and visuals work as intended if characters were permitted to fly around freely.

Be cautious about buying this item used. Each copy of the expansion includes a key code that is required to upgrade your account to allow access to the new content. If you buy a used copy of the software where the seller has already used that key to upgrade his account, you'll still be able to install the software upgrade, but the lack of an unused key will mean that you won't be able to apply the upgrade to your account that's required to actually access the new content.

If you install the expansion on a computer where more than one account is used (for example, if you and your spouse each has your own account) then you can only use the key to upgrade one of those accounts. The other account will continue to work, but it will not be given access to the expansion pack content. Therefore, you need to obtain one expansion pack for each account you or your household has if you want to access the new content on all of them.

Edit: As of January 22, 2007 Blizzard has announced on their forums that they're working on allowing players who already upgraded using the basic expansion to then also upgrade using the collector's edition in order to get the limited edition pet. You'll have to call Blizzard's billing service line with the unused collector's edition expansion key, so it's slightly more work than upgrading directly with the CE, but it can now be done.

ABOUT ME: I have played an Undead Rogue since day 1, and after around 20 days played at 70 I have taken the plunge to roll a paladin and I am loving it. Also, I have raided all dungeons up to Naxxramas.

The Burning Crusade is by far the best expansion, and expands the formula of World of Warcraft even more. Blizzard really fixed the problems with gear, the lack of endlevel dungeons, lack of raid content, boss design, and quest rewards. I will discuss these five things in detail.

~ GEAR ~
Pre-BC: The difference between raiders and casual players was huge. Players who werent decked in epic gear didnt stand a chance against other players who did. Even players in Tier 1 (easiest epic set to get at the time) could kill players in blues without even trying.
BC: The difference between raid gear and dungeon gear isnt very big any longer. I replaced my entire Tier 2 set and my epic weapons from raiding by the time I hit around level 66ish. After having over 20 days /played at 70, I have to say I am having a lot more to do at 70. Very good trinkets and weapons are easily obtainable by dungeon runs, and endgame content is fairly easy (with the exception of Serpentshrine Cavern, The Eye, and Black Temple). However, it is now fair competition between epic'd players and blue'd players. Gladiator PVP gear is amazingly powerful and the weapons are on-par with most of the weapons from Karazhan and Serpentshrine. If you have a team of skilled players, it wont be long to obtain these crazy Gladiator sets.

~ DUNGEONS ~
Pre-BC: After getting your attunements done, you had 2 options in terms of dungeons: do UBRS, scholomance, or stratholme for sub-par gear, or spend 4 hours a night raiding MC, BWL, AQ40, Naxx, ZG, and AQ20 for epic gear that is nearly 2x as powerful as non-epic gear. The dungeons were boring and got old quickly.
BC: As soon as you enter the outlands, you are greeted by 4 dungeon hubs of ~4 dungeons of different levels. The gear from these dungeons will most definitely replace your level 60 gear. Every level you gain you will be able to do another dungeon to get shiny new gear. And as soon as you hit 70, over 5 dungeons open up for you (all hosting INCREDIBLY powerful gear). There are plenty of quests for these dungeons, and they are all very interesting and look different from one another. They are all very straight forward and dont really get old.

~ RAID CONTENT ~
Pre-BC: Most people finished with content very quickly and ended up waiting for a new dungeon to come out. Yes, I was there when Blackwing Lair came out and it was BUGGY as hell and no one got ANYWHERE. Yes, I endured through the horribly designed pre-C'Thun trash in AQ40, and yes I was there when the C'Thun encounter was terribly buggy and no one could do anything in phase 2. Then Naxxramas came out and raiders rejoiced because it was the best dungeon made and I couldnt agree more.
BC: The new dungeons and bosses (which I will get into later) are amazing to say. The environments and atmosphere of each raid dungeon is different and they all have a certain feel to them. A Karazhan run feels like an adventure through an old abandoned run-down castle full of monsters and the undead. Gruuls lair feels like an epic journey through the cave of an incredibly powerful monster. Magtheridon's Lair (whom you are teased by in Blood Furnace) feels like a prison holding an ancient, wise, and destructive monster...and it is! These dungeons are all these things, they are alive, they are vibrant, and they are FUN.

~ BOSS DESIGN ~
Pre-BC: Ragnaros was the introduction of the horrible resistance checks in WoW. I can think of around 8-10 encounters that were resist checks and stupid gear checks (Vael/huhuran and twin emps/patchwerk, respectively) that prevented progression in the 4 40 mans. With the exception of Naxxramas and Blackwing Lair, all these dungeons were filled with trash mobs and you spent more time clearing trash than doing bosses. The bosses just were NOT fun.
BC: The boss encounters in the Burning Crusade are a HUGE improvement over their predecessors. New, different encounters such as netherspite and shade of aran, and just plain fun ones like the chess event are just a few to name. They are all very fun, and are definitely worth wiping on, the pleasure and burst of excitement when you down these challenging bosses after nights of wiping are awesome. Also, with the 10/25 man caps, it is much easier to start/join a raiding guild that gets somewhere. The content isnt as crazy as Naxxramas was at 60, but they still require the same level of organization, skill, and teamwork.

~ QUEST DESIGN ~
Pre-BC: Not much to say besides that the quests in Azeroth are stupid, annoying, and the rewards are HORRIBLE and USELESS. They are all very similar and they are very repetitive.
BC: All the quests are awesome and different. While you still have those grind + kill + get x of this quests, you have an assortment of new quests as well. You can summon bosses, and do bombing missions, they are all new, and they are all pure fun. I even love questing at 70, the money and even some of the loot are great to have. I am working on the Netherdrake questline at the moment, and I cant wait to have my own transparent giant dragon to fly around the outlands on. There are loads of quests leftover at 70, and they all have very good rewards at the end of each chain.

Why doesn't the Burning Crusade get a 5/5 overall? For one reason: they did not revamp Azeroth. Revisiting Azeroth at 70 is like attending a funeral, its stupid, and its pathetic how useless anything from Azeroth is at 70. The quests leading up to level 58 (when you can enter outlands)still have sub par rewards, and besides the opening of Karazhan and Caverns of Time, they have done absolutely NOTHING with the world outside of BC. I believe they really need to revamp the questlines and the rewards to make it more rewarding for people to go back to Azeroth to do the old quests and content.

Other than that, The Burning Crusade is the most extensive expansion to a game I have seen, and it is definitely worth the $40 to jump on the ship. I tip my hat to Blizzard for making an incredibly fun and rewarding game even better.

For those of you who are wondering if you should buy the BC expansion and how it is faring on the live servers, let me put your mind at ease. The servers are up, the game is wonderful, and the new content puts the original content of WoW to shame. This is an expansion that Blizzard should stand up and be proud of!

Contrary to other players experiences, I played the expansion for about 10 hours of the first day of its official live release (not the beta), and it is not buggy. The lag in the Outland can be a bit much at times, but then again when every level 60 on your server is in one zone trying to do quests, what do you expect? The mobs are constantly respawning at a rate so fast that once you kill the mob a respwan happens almost instantly (due to the frequency of kills in the zone). I have seen only one "evade" mob bugging out, and been disconnected twice in 10 hours, each time for less than a minute. With the score and breadth of the expansion, these are small problems that will not hamper your gameplay in the least (unless you are a Mr. Grumpy-Pants).

The bottom line: buy the expansion if you play Warcraft. You won't regret it.

World of Warcraft (WoW) expansion pack technical aspects have been covered in previous reviews. This is a synopsis:

You must have WoW (the pre expansion game) installed before installing the WoW expansion pack. The expansion pack consists of four CD disks with your CD key on the first disk. Install the disks and enter your CD key (installation will prompt you for your key).

Gave the expansion pack five stars, so we'll cover its negatives first...

1) There were a large number of level 60s when the expansion pack was released on January 16th 2007. Immediately after release, Outland starting areas like Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh were packed with level 60s all competing aggressively for the same quests. Players were compelled to group, not because quest mobs were difficult, but because so many players were trying to kill them.

2) Maps need more visual detail. For example, after you discover the zeppelin crash in the Hellfire Peninsula, its name doesn't appear on the map. You must mouse over it too see it.

3) Expansion pack quests are annoyingly vague. Strongly recommend Thottbot and Allakhazam for clarifications. Either that or your toon will be killing a lot of unnecessary mobs and doing a lot of unnecessary dying.

Now some of its many positives...

Visually and musically the expansion pack is outstanding! Zones have a strong Myst influence, i.e. Teledahn inspired Zangarmarsh. That's an excellent influence. After entering each new zone, your initial reaction will be an invariable, "Oh, wow!"

Expansion game play is precisely the same as pre expansion game play. WoW has the best game play in the MMORPG genre. Game play is intuitive; you don't need to read the game manual to begin playing.

There's an abundance of challenging quests. Blizzard has increased quest log size from 20 to 25 quests (It should be increased more, say 75 quests). The vast majority of quests do not require grouping. If you wish, you can easily solo your way to level 70.

Don't want to give away any spoilers, but here's a hint:

Get to Shattrath City (Terokkar Forest) ASAP. You'll find its banks and portals useful. Moreover, Shattrath City is yet another example of, "Oh, wow!"

So I went to the game store and waited in line to get my pre-order at release. Got home, installed it in about 45minutes or so with the updates, which was nice.

Lag wasn't bad on my server (Malygos) and had fun getting a few levels on a new Blood Elf paladin. Until the next day...tried to take my lvl 60 into Outlands...Questing was painful with all the lag, then the various world servers kept crashing, no mobs...or insanely fast respawns. No NPC's for quests, etc. I played the beta a bit and release was much improved over it, however I think that this kind of performance should be expected for the first days/weeks after release.

Overall the new content seems to be interesting and the quest reward items seem to be significantly better than what you could get raiding the 40 man instances, which is very depressing for those of us who spent MONTHS raiding to get the 'epic' gear just to have it replaced with green quest rewards in one day.

If you are addicted to World of Warcraft, I am sure you will become just as addicted to Burning Crusade. :)

The Burning Crusade is more of the same old same old - grinding for gear, reputation, and gold. The storyline would be much better if Blizzard actually incorporated it into the game, instead of adding it as an afterthought. The very nature of this game is showing off how fast you can level your toon and whom has the best gear. I prefer to play a game that actually has an end-game I can participate in. I spent 7 months playing WoW and enjoyed it. Now I am moving on though. Wrath of the Lich King? No thanks. What is the difference between level 70 and level 80? Not much, just more expensive gear and another month of my life grinding to 80 so I can get bored with it. Thanks for the memories Blizzard. /cancel

I have fun playing this, but found the original more captivating. I was disappointed with the size of the new world, felt it was too small and was easy to explore very quickly. As for the new raid content, I consider it to be too complicated and elaborate in the extremely long chain of events that you have to accomplish just to move into each new raid dungeon. I also don't like the fact that you have to grind forever in the various 5 mans to get rep to unlock heroic mode to be able to get keys to various higher level raid dungeons. Grinding is the most boring thing in the world to me and this game has way too much of it. Overall, enjoyed a lot of the new world content but the elaborate raid system eventually drove me out of the game due to boredom.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE THIS ITEM!!!-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I recently bought the entire WoW suite through Amazon only to find that the Burning Crusade discs and keys are no longer needed. When you purchase the original game, the key for it works as though it was the "Battle Chest" Edition. Burning Crusade now comes with the original game at NO EXTRA COST!

I have already contacted Blizzard and requested that they remove this item from the Amazon Cart, those who are sellers of new discs are recommended to request a reimbursement for any costs that they have accrued while providing this product.

Anyone who has regrettably purchased this item already are suggested to contact Blizzard's Support Queue by following the link below and requesting that they reimburse you in some way (I have asked for game time myself) though it is still at their discretion to authorize any kind of benefits to those that were tricked into thinking they needed this former expansion.

To file a ticket to the Blizzard Support Channel, follow the link below:
[...]

Well, it took 2 years for the first expansion of World of Warcraft to be released. The game promises only 10 new levels to existing players, which means anywhere from about a week to a month of play (depending on play time). After that you're capped at 70 again and busy yourself with new content while you wait for another expansion. So why the hype, why is this game so great? It's quite simple--the new content is amazing. The Outland is a great new place to quest, the zones are huge, and, unlike parts of the original game, it is easy to level all the way from 60 to 70 just by doing quests alone.

Leveling is much more fun this time around (that's not to say it wasn't fun before, but it's moreso now) and the new world is so much different from the old that it's difficult to imagine feeling that its "more of the same." One of the best parts of the expansion, though, and one not to be missed, is the addition of two new races, Dranei and Blood Elves, and the storyline that accompanies the respective races. The new starting areas are remarkably well done and the plotline fantastic. Even if you're a veteran player of WoW, don't pass up the opportunity to explore the new zones.

I've held off review of this item until I actually had a chance to really get into the features offered by the expansion beyond just initial impressions. What I came away with is that The Burning Crusade delivers more of what the original World of Warcraft game offered, but that the new offerings are much the same as what was available before. In other words, you can continue to advance now beyond the level cap of 60 (and the skill caps of 300) but that the new advancements don't really offer anything that redefines the game. If the design was to merely open up "more" then Blizzard delivered a well done, if pricey (you are paying the price of a full game here), continuation. If you were looking to be wow'd the way we were when first visited by World of Warcraft, I don't think this expansion delivers that. Continuing a good thing is fine, but paying the price of a full game to just unlock 10 more levels of advancement that is much the same as before isn't a great value. If you were not a big World of Warcraft fan you will likely enjoy putting that money into discovering a new MMO entirely as you won't see anything really new or inventive here.

As stated, The Burning Crusade moves the level cap from 60 to 70, allowing you 10 more talent points to spend on increasing the strengths of your character and investing in talents that were recently made available.

In addition, the game offers two new races (Drenai and Blood Elf) with thier unique starting areas and character models. The models and areas are not exactly new, you've seen them here and there before in one form or another. But still, new-ish models and color schemes and a new layout of the scenery models to explore. Quests remain much the same as they ever were, with nothing about them standing out.

Also introduced was an additional trade skill, Jewelcrafting. I wasn't a big fan of the Trade Skills in the basic game because the items you could make were not of any better quality than what you could loot (oftentimes lesser quality) and required a lot of effort in acquiring mats for when you could just buy the items readily available equivalent. There were a few high-end crafting items that were very nice to have, but very difficult to get to the point of making. Overall, the Trade Skills were a waste of money as you were better off financially to just harvest materials and sell them for immediate cash and then buy the items you want. Jewelcrafting has some early items that are actually useful as low level rings and such are often difficult to find. Hopefully it is a profession that will actually remain useful throughout.

The Burning Crusade features a new world to explore and conquer called Outland. The visuals that comprise the new models and new area look right in place and familiar - because really, you have seen the same models before for most things. Don't get me wrong, the new races and areas look as good as anything you will see in World of Warcraft, but they don't feel entirely different or new.

The new expansion doesn't require computer upgrades as the graphical quality hasn't really changed much and things are rendered much the same as before. By today's standards the graphics of World of Warcraft, while vibrant, are aging, but friendly to a large group of computers so you won't have to worry about performance demands. If you could already play the game well, you will be fine with the expansion.

I still give the game an enjoyment factor of 4 out of 5. It has a lot of things that I don't like but it offers a lot of enjoyment as well and is a great time sink. The Burning Crusade rekindles my interest in the game but I think that interest will sadly be short-lived. Having already grown tired of World of Warcraft's basic gameplay and mechanics, I don't think it will take long to feel like I've experienced all the "new" stuff.